The Gautrain has come under fire after allegations that its high costs meant it was of little value to South Africa. Moneyweb looks at how this project has already made a difference for the country

The Gautrain project has come under fire for costing too much and adding no value to South Africa due to perceptions it was built overseas. Jack van der Merwe, Gautrain project leader, busted the myths around the project and its impact on SA as a developing country.

“You see, whenever you want to do something like this politicians say to you ‘what is it going to cost?’, and we did a rough estimate and we said R7bn, in February 2002 terms. The tender that we eventually signed was about R14bn in 2002 terms. In today’s terms the tender we’ve got is R25bn and this is a [public private partnership] and as such the cost is fixed…

“It is a primary focus of us to create jobs. We have created 90, 000 jobs up to now. The concessionaire has got about 11 000 people working on-site on any day. We’re going through accredited training and the idea is to create skills that will create careers for people from the lowest level upwards, so that you can take the accredited certificate and go and work at other places. So we have really bent over backwards to try and create the skills that we need.”

Van der Merwe also gave an indication of the future of rail in South Africa, saying “We have the technology that we can roll out. We have made the trains in South Africa, we’ve assembled them here, so the knowledge and experience is here, our contractors have been working on this project, so it’s something that we can roll out.

“The government’s announced the whole KwaNdebele-Tshwane link, 140 kilometres. We can link the Pretoria ring rail, which is a 26-kilometre, 26-station ring through Pretoria. So all of this is on the drawing board.

“We are looking at going from Johannesburg to Durban, a high-speed link there. So if one can just looks forward, if we have a petrol crisis, a fuel crisis, you have electric-powered cars but there are no electric-powered trucks.

“So the freight has to move towards rail, and that’s why you find throughout the world there’s a new focus on rail because down the line if we run into energy crisis we’ll have to revert freight back to heavy rail.”

An interesting insight gained on the (very quick) train ride back to Marlboro station was from some Gautrain law enforcers we shared the ride with.

Sitting in the spacious, comfortable seats and looking out of the impressively large windows that frame the scenery and traffic jams we raced past beautifully, they mentioned they are ex-SA Police Service and “power” (flexing their arms) to enforce rules on the train.

An example was putting your feet up on the seat opposite you, with penalties starting at R150! If you don’t like that then they’ll just ban you from the system. Another Gautrain lady mentioned that graffiti must be removed within 24 hours and that the trains will be cleaned regularly. A proliferation of tactfully placed cameras will enable the nerve centre, described as a scene out of a Bruce Willis movie with a huge panel showing feeds from the hundreds of cameras, to identify offenders quickly.

With eyes and cameras in every corner, big brother is watching to ensure the 1% don’t ruin the train for the other 99% of decent citizens we have. www.moneyweb.co.za

Read: Gautrain takes off and Africa’s first high speed train to launch in June.